Texting banned for state workers
The governor’s administration has imposed a ban on text messages, instant messages or personal email for state employees conducting official business.
The Portland Press Herald reported the change was inspired by recent testimony of one state worker who told the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee that supervisors at the Maine Center for Disease Control told her to use text messages to communicate because they could not be obtained through a public records request. The state agency’s leaders are under scrutiny from the committee after whistleblower and former CDC staff member Sharon Leahy-Lind alleged her bosses inappropriately tweaked evaluations for $4.7 million in public health grants and destroyed related records.
The new texting ban aims to keep state policy in line with the Maine Freedom of Access Act, which requires all communications related to public business be retained and open to public inspection. Brenda Kielty, the state’s public access ombudsman, told the panel that use of state-issued BlackBerry phones posed a public access problem because messages are not stored on BlackBerry or state servers. State records requested by the newspaper showed as many as 4,500 state workers have state-issued BlackBerry phones.
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